Creating a Welcoming Community

by Miki Kashtan

A year ago, I wrote a piece about some of the pitfalls of learning and using Nonviolent Communication. That piece has been one of my most popular ones, and I received a number of comments that pointed out more areas to explore in how to possibly make Nonviolent Communication (NVC) ever more practical, relevant, and authentic. Today I want to address one aspect of this that is related to how welcoming the NVC community can be. I see this as an exercise in humility, acceptance, and flexibility.

Humility doesn’t come easily to me individually. Perhaps because of this awareness, I am quite vigilant about maintaining it as a commitment with regards to NVC. I am sadly aware that the NVC community is not welcoming to some groups of people. Most obviously, I know that if I were a Republican, I would find the groups of people attracted to NVC outright inhospitable. This is not true only of NVC groups, and is sadly familiar to me in any group of people I have seen so far who are politically left of center. 

Here’s one example. Some years ago, I was offering monthly coaching calls to volunteers and activists of the Peace Alliance in support of their ability to work effectively on the Department of Peace campaign – not an NVC group! I remember two specific moments that highlight this difficulty. One was a moment in which someone on the call spoke up and said that she was a Republican, and talked about how hard it was for her to work with the other people in the group, the assumption that everyone would be a Democrat being one of the stumbling blocks for her. The other moment was when I did something akin to a collective role-play. I asked everyone on the call to imagine that they are opposed to the proposed legislation to establish a federal department of peace, and to imagine, as that person, hearing some of the things that they routinely say to each other or the arguments they make about the legislation. Then I asked them if, as that person, they felt any sense of care or respect for themselves. They immediately saw that their normal way of speaking would create barriers; that they truly had some hidden or not so hidden beliefs that Republicans were stupid for having the beliefs they had.